


i would swim but the river is so wide

by Joiedevivre



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joiedevivre/pseuds/Joiedevivre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juice, 6x01. A slow and fading slide into oblivion.<br/>-<br/><i>God knows I've failed, but He knows that I've tried. </i></p><p>
  <i>I long for something that's safe and warm</i>
  <br/>
  <i>all I have is all that is gone</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I'm as helpless and as hopeless as a feather on the Clyde</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i would swim but the river is so wide

It's impossible for him to forget at this moment, as he sees the garage door pulled shut, exactly the actions and steps it took to get him to this place. 

It begins in a van, staring straight across at the mostly empty bench that holds only Jax, and around him, his brothers are laughing because they feel victorious. 

Juice does not feel victorious. What Juice feels is anxious, resisting the urge to jiggle his leg up and down, to tap his fingers, rock back and forward. It's stupid and it's arrogant in a way, but glancing around him, he knows that Jax is the only person who could really understand the future he's foreseeing, and he's similarly confident that Jax will never have to. Jax is bigger than he is. Not by a lot, but by enough. He's also Jax - golden boy, promised son - and it will not be his fate to be passed around as bait or even more while they do this time that they're just so fucking happy to have gotten. Sure, yeah, it's better than what they were facing before. 

But the outright celebration seems a little much. He remembers the hands, reaching for his body, skimming over his flesh, and he wants to shiver and crawl out of his own skin. 

How can he survive 14 months when it didn't even take 14 hours before he was cornered last time? 

The clink startles him out of memory, and his eyes shift over, seeing Chibs methodically pulling off his rings, one by one. It's not like it's a surprise. It was obvious what this was the moment Chibs started not so subtly shooing the others out of the garage. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but Chibs doesn't want to hear it. 

Neither does he. 

He remembers the wind on his face the day they got out and it had felt like escaping purgatory. 

C'mon, Juice, you're a smart guy. You know what comes after purgatory. 

No heaven for demons. 

Roosevelt's face. That knowing smirk. The picture in the folder. 

Pounding heartbeat, scurrying out of the warehouse with an entire brick of coke. 

The fear, the constant, gnawing, ripping away at him in needle sharp bites worrying the edges of his mind, while everyone shouted and screamed and the guilt, oh, God, the guilt as his brothers looked right past him, never considering that he was the betrayer. 

Warm wet spray of blood. It's there, in that memory, that exact moment when he realized how far he'd fallen, the catch that always tears at him and the tears that come welling up; but now his eyes feel glassy and dry as he can no longer remember what he's holding on to and what it was all for. 

There are so many, many things he thinks he wants to say, as Chibs shifts away from the counter and moves towards him, and he wonders where all those words went, because he feels as empty as a cracked glass. Hollowed out and half-hearted. He thinks he nods. He's not sure. And just before it begins, he finds that reason somewhere inside. 

Everything he did, it was all to hold on to what he had, but he never had anything, did he? Just the funny little boy with the computers, soft and useless in a herd of snarling, biting men full of brawn and rage. 

But he wants. 

And it scares him. 

He is so tired, and so broken, and so lost in this world.

But he wants. 

He wants to be better than he is, and he wants not to let them all down, he wants to be one of them, and he just wants to feel something. 

So he embraces the pain that he knows is coming, because he's all out of cards to play and it was a shit hand to begin with. 

_"I love you, brother."_

And he did, at some point, and maybe if he can find that again, he'll remember what this was all for, and that first hit, it rocks him backward, sends him reeling. Impact, a searing shock and something inside him that he forgot was there throbs weakly, but it's not enough, he's still adrift somewhere in a nothing world. So he doesn't fight the pain, because it's the only thing clear inside him, the ring of a bell. He shoves himself back up and he can even feel a glint in his eye, a ferocity of expression that begs for answer. Chibs does not disappoint, a brief tilt of his head that goes unexplained, and Juice wonders if he expected him to fight. The next blow is a tidal wave and it rolls him away, tossing him like a rag doll. Coherency, fades, and he should have remembered that Chibs hits like an anvil, the hammer of the gods, and he wants to push himself back up, because whatever it is inside him, it's fluttering weakly, and if he doesn't wake it now, he thinks he never might and that scares him more than anything, because this is all that's left of him. But his arms don't respond and his legs slip so weakly that he wants to scream because this is his last chance, and Chibs' hands on him, hauling him upwards, somehow feel like a saving grace and make him want to sob like a child. And for the briefest moment, a millisecond of memory, his fists clasped around Chibs' jacket give him just enough strength to lean backward and accept the bracing hand on his shoulder before another fist flies. Chibs wants him to have this. It's a gift, isn't it? It has to be, because Chibs wouldn't be hitting him if he didn't care, would he?

He can't lift himself again, dizzy with pain and too disoriented to stand but he hopes he's right when this is all he has left and each blow begins to feel like divine punishment. He doesn't remember when it ends and he doesn't remember whether he cries or not, and he doesn't know how he got inside later as Chibs' hands, too gentle and kind, are cleaning his battered, swollen face, pressing butterfly bandages across his cuts. And worst of all, there's still just nothing left inside him and he knows that there was no point to any of it anyway. 

Because, as usual, this wasn't about him and what he needed, if he even has feelings so strong as need anymore. It was about Chibs and what he needed, and he hopes Chibs found it because he is so, so tired. And there are no answers and there is no way out and there is just nothing, nothing that he can feel except the massive agony radiating from his head. He thinks that it will do, as he relishes for the barest second the feel of Chibs' hand on back of his head, allows himself that blink of comfort before it's gone in another moment and everything is just so dark and hollow. He knows he's alive but he's only breathing, whatever the rest of him was is long gone now.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I wrote this because I hate myself, and you read it because you hate yourself. 
> 
> The song from the summary is Feather on the Clyde by Passenger. It's 8x as painful if you listen to it while reading.


End file.
